The first time I saw W.A.S.P. I was a kid at the Orange Pavilion in San Bernardino, 1984. They were opening for Krokus and Helix, and I didn’t have the vocabulary for what happened to me that night. Forty-two years and more shows than I can count later, I’m still not sure I do. But […]
Songs written inside a prison cell. A producer chased down by hopping a fence, climbing a tree, and waiting outside a trailer with cash in hand. Collaborations that happened because the right people walked through the door at the right moment. There is nothing tidy about the way Not Free Money, the new album from […]
PHOTO: MIKE WHITE | Urge Overkill, the Chicago rock band, isn’t exactly out on the road this summer. But it is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the remastered custom pink-and-purple vinyl reissue of Exit the Dragon, the double album recorded at the height of their success. It was also an album, produced by the Butcher […]
PHOTOS: MATTHEW BELTER | Some records you outgrow. Others grow up right alongside you. For more than forty years, Haircut 100 has been the second kind for me—the sound of a certain light, a certain feeling, the kind of song that quietly turns an ordinary afternoon into a memory you keep. “Love Plus One” has […]
PHOTOS: TODD JUDD | There are artists who make songs—and then there are artists who build worlds you can step into, drop a needle upon, and live inside for a while. Protoje has always been firmly in that second category. Catching up with him ahead of a show, the conversation moved easily between craft, intention, […]
PHOTOS: MATTHEW BELTER | The first time I heard Howard Jones, I was a kid sitting too close to a stereo speaker, trying to figure out how a single guy with a stack of synthesizers could sound so big. The second time mattered more. April 28, 1992. The Variety Arts Theater in Los Angeles was […]
PHOTOS: MATTHEW BELTER | I’ll be honest with you—my roots are in rock and roll. That’s where I live, that’s where I was raised musically, and that’s the lens I’ve always brought to this work. But one thing this job has taught me, over and over again, is that great artistry doesn’t care about genre. […]
Some interviews you prepare for. You build the questions, you do the research, you know exactly where you want the conversation to go. And then the person on the other end of the line says something that stops you cold—something that has nothing to do with the prepared question in front of you and everything […]
Toody Cole has the best laugh I’ve heard in a long time—big, unabashed, spontaneous. We’ve traded emails for a month or two, trying to find room for an interview between my touring schedule and hers. I had purchased some Dead Moon gear to wear for an upcoming book event—the band gets a nod in my […]
PHOTO: CASSIE SCOTT | Joel Paterson knows the guitar. He relates to its history, believes in its progression of instrumental prowess, its evolution of sonics over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and he creates his own version to introduce a new modern guitar dialogue for other players to commune with and respond […]
In a rare and intimate conversation, I had the privilege of sitting down with Andy McCluskey, the visionary frontman of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), ahead of their highly anticipated performance at the Cruel World Festival. With a career spanning over four decades, McCluskey opened up about his enduring partnership with co-founder Paul Humphreys, […]
Remembering Joey Molland with a look back from our archives from 2020. —Ed. Joey Molland has seen it all. During his time in Badfinger, he witnessed the ups and downs of rock and roll stardom, rubbing elbows with The Beatles no less, and being taken under their collective wings to be the big, blockbuster breakout […]
Remembering David Johansen with a look back from our archives from 2012. —Ed. I spoke with David Johansen as he was surrounded by devastation from Superstorm Sandy. “I’m doing good for being in a disaster area,” he said in his distinctive growl. He knows the City will make it. Johansen is a New Yorker through […]
When it comes to thrash metal, few names carry as much weight as Gary Holt. As one of the originals and powerhouse guitarist of Exodus, Holt has been at the forefront of one of music’s most electrifying and enduring genres, shaping its raw energy and uncompromising spirit for over four decades. Now, with his much-anticipated […]
PHOTO: DANNY CLINCH | The gravelly drawl was familiar. Lucinda Williams was calling from Minneapolis, where she just appeared as a special guest on Cyndi Lauper’s farewell tour, joining her on a poignant “Time After Time.” Days earlier, Williams dueted with Elvis Costello on “Wild Horses” at the Jesse Malin comeback concert in New York […]
